Willa Cather's Prairie Trilogy - O Pioneers! - The Song of the Lark - My Antonia

The Prairie Trilogy is series of three novels centered around life in the Midwest during the late 19th/early 20th centuries by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather. First, in 'O Pioneers!,' we meet Alexandra Bergson, who inherits the family farm after her father dies and leaves her to care for her three siblings. While many immigrant families are giving up their farms and moving back to the city (or to their home countries), Alexandra decides to try to tough it out on the prairie. Next, in 'The Song of the Lark' we are introduced to Thea Kronborg, a Colorado piano teacher who discovers she has an amazing singing voice and, despite the long odds, attempts to become a world-renowned opera star. Finally, in 'My Antonia,' we follow the lives of two protagonists: orphan Jim Burden, who is shipped off to Nebraska to live with his grandparents after his parents die, and Antonia, a young farm girl who is struggling to survive raise her family out of poverty. Three of the most celebrated novels of the mid-twentieth century, the books comprising 'The Prairie Trilogy' helped cement Willa Cather as one of the most important writers of her generation.